Monday, August 15, 2005



These past few weeks have been quite stressful.

There are many things going on at work. Work causes stress at home. Stress at home causes stress for my wife. Stress for my wife causes stress for her family. Stress for her family . . . That again causes stress for me.

In all of this it has been easy to drop out of sight and out of mind. I have fallen off the wagon. I have not trained in over a week. I have made several excuses. Even this morning I had my running gear all set out for me to run at 5:45am. Alarm went off. I hit the snooze twice. I finally rose from the bed about 6:00am, than just slumped on the couch and turned on Sport Center.

The whole time I am watching TV, I get more frustrated with myself. I try and make excuses even so I don’t feel like a failure.

Amanda wakes. She asks me if I am feeling OK. I told her I felt sick. I did a little, but more I was just sick of myself. It is not easy failing for the millionth time at this health thing.

You see at times I don’t feel like I have just failed myself.

My Father . . . He has been frustrated with my weight now for many years. He is well fit and strong like bear! I feel like I let him down too when I fail.

My friends that are so behind me and proud of me when I succeed, I feel like I let them down as well.

Then there is the part of me that is just afraid I will never reach my goals. I see myself in the mirror and I question whether I will ever get rid of the extra 200 pounds I need to. If you are fat you know what I mean when I say I look in the mirror. It is amazing how brutal I can be to myself.

Then I begin to think about people who are not fat. I wonder what they are saying to each other when they pass me in their car as I am running? The more I resist training, the more I fret about what I look like and how bad I look trying to run and then I put it off. Smart huh?

Food is an addiction for me. Exercising is fun for me, but I wear down quickly. My body aches for days after a race or hard day of training.

Have you noticed a trend here?

I have listed my fears. I have hit a rut, a bump in the road, fallen of the wagon, what ever you call it. I have stopped my positive momentum towards good health. I was feeling more and more like a quitter and loser, a failure, but something happened.

Something awesome happened.

Those people I was afraid of letting down. They picked me up. Now, I haven’t trained yet, but I have made a promise to them that I would refocus my determination and start back training and completing my goals. Tomorrow I will run. The next day I will swim. The following day I will bike. Then I will do it all over again.

My point is. I have fallen off this wagon a million times before. The difference between the other times and this one is, I am getting right back on it, right away. I am not going to feel sorry for myself. I am not going to take weeks and months to fall back into morbidity and accelerated death.

I am not going to eat badly and say who cares anyway! I am not going to make up reasons for not exercising and training so I feel lees guilty!

I am going to get back on the stick! I am going to start now.

I stopped having fast food for three months! THREE MONTHS!! I had it four times in the last week. I had been drinking only water for months, in the last week I’ve had more sprites and root beers than I care to count!

NO MORE!

Why am I putting this all down on a blog for everyone to read?

I am slowly figuring things out about this whole being fat thing.

Here are my latest lessons.

The people in your life that care for you and your health don’t care if you fail, they only care if you quit. We are all going to fail at this. We have been failing at it for years now, some of us all of our lives. We will fail again! When we fail and those who care for us find out that we have failed, they are not going to chastise us! They will not make fun of you. They will not say I told you so. They will not go away!

They will challenge you. They will comfort you. They will motivate you. They will support you even more than they did when you were succeeding! If you don’t believe me, just try it. Wait, better yet, you’ll see because that is my second lesson.

YOU WILL FAIL. Several times. I have failed two or three times since I began training and completing triathlons. I have had set backs and failures. This past week and a half or so had been a major failure. And there will be more.

The key I am learning is, when you fail, first try and understand why. What happened? Was it stress? Did something in your schedule change? Did you let your membership at the YMCA expire and then just blew it off? Where you injured? Is something emotional going on in your life? Write it down, figure what all the reasons are that you might be falling off of the wagon.

Once you have an idea why, you my not be certain, but you have an idea, then try and understand how you can continue to focus on your health and training even under the same circumstances the next time it happens.

Now I realized that about half of what I mentioned in the previous paragraph was happening to me. That may be the same with you? But you can over come it with planning.

Once you have an idea of what happened, get back on the stick!

It’s OK to fail. It’s not OK to quit.

Tell your friends when you’re failing next time.

Then sit back and watch.

That’s my last lesson. I underestimated my friends. You can do the same, but I am sure you’ll get some of the same results as I did this weekend.

I am too afraid to quit now. The threats I received form my friends seemed sincere and I’m not going to test them.

I thank them for that and tomorrow I will run. I will run and run and run. It will hurt and I will sweat . . . A lot. However, I will be happy.

I will be happy because I am back o the wagon again. Just like you. Come on. Get back in it. I’m with you.

I’m with you in our successes and our failures and guess what, there are many more with us.

Determination.

2 comments:

Shellee said...

You know, it's not how many times you don't succeed, it's that you keep trying.

Fall down 8 times, get up 9.

Just do something. Get moving. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be for hours. Walk for 20 minutes a day, if that's all you can handle, then that's fine. But DO SOMETHING!!

Make a goal, an easy goal - a goal you know you can slam dunk. When you make that goal, go for the next goal. Oh, and don't beat yourself up about falling off the wagon - just go from where you are now.

I've been in this trying to lose weight for 10 years - and I think FINALLY something has clicked, hopefully this time is the last time I'll be riding this carousel - but I still feel down and frustrated sometimes - (I totally ranted on my blog at BT last week - user: cadreamer, if you'd like to take a look)

Good Luck!

Anonymous said...

I know a lot of people who love Chris...just Chris. How about a physically fit vacation next year? We could hike or something. Your friends up North love you.